BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is lovingly updated on a daily basis.

Get a view of what’s been happening in and out of the art room through the art and design of practicing teachers.Through the lens of contemporary art and design, classrooms become installations, prototypes art objects, and demonstrations performance. See how teachers are interpreting these ideas in their research, studio practice, and teaching.

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Failure: August Creative Mornings Baltimore
Friday, August 22 at 8:30am at The Walters Art Museum

We’re switching things up this month… you’re not gonna want to miss this one! ShineCreative.tv will be debuting their short film from our FAIL COCKTAIL event. At the FAIL COCKTAIL, several local creatives (see the badass list below) got together at Dooby’s Coffee and had an inspiring and dynamic discussion on Failure – lessons learned, what rock bottom looked like (lots of packaged ramen, turns out), and how they would redefine the word if they could. Following the film, Chris Attenborough of MICA and attenborough-naftel will speak on how he draws from failure in his installations and how he guides his students through it. Everyone from the film will be around for Q&A.

The weekend will also feature a wide range of other performances and activities, including field location and dance performances by Lexie Mountain Boys and others; comedy from Alan Resnick and many more; and plays such as Connor Kizer’s Chronotony.

Tickets for the festival will go on sale Thursday, June 19th!!!

The first 50 tickets sold will be $50/each; subsequent advance tickets will be $65, and tickets will be available at the gate for $85. No day passes will be available. A limited number of cabin beds will be available for an additional $20/each for the weekend. Attendance for the festival is ages 18+.

Chicanismo y Latinismo at Creative Alliance

Chicanismo y Latinismo is a group exhibition that explores how the Chicano movement has continued to evolve by moving beyond its West Coast origins and expand its sense of justice to include a multiplicity of Latin American identities. The show also explores how and why artists of various Latin American nationalities identify with or against the label of being Chicano. Artists exploring either Chicanismo or Latinismo today use a variety of media and social encounter tactics, including performance, costuming, painting, screenprinting, video, murals, and sculpture to clarify misconceptions of their contemporary movements while bridging their experience into both gallery and community spaces.

Historically speaking, being Chicano meant choosing to be a Mexican-American with a non-Anglo view of oneself and to acknowledge the presence of both historical narratives as present within one body. Today, “being Chicano” is about one’s ideology and approach to advancing cultural norms, including issues of justice in relation to gay and lesbian rights. The historical Chicano movement has blossomed into a larger conversation that gives voice to an entire strata of the American population whose identities stem from their dual status as immigrants, or any other marginalized group, and Americans.

This art historical movement was predominantly expressed by artists who painted public murals following in the footsteps of similar artists in the ‘30s such as Diego Rivera who attempted to depict the issues inherent to the Latino experience. These activist-artists used art to examine their identity and history as well as speak out about social issues, often in a controversial way. A combination of street art and community activism, the Chicano murals of a generation ago were seen as a way to rally and unite the community, decorate space and use it to educate the public.

Artists situated within Latinismo hold a very similar set of beliefs; however, they make a distinction from Chicanismo because of its origins, which directly correlate to a Mexican-American experience. Those identifying with Latinismo similarly explore their dual identity but with attention to their specific nationality, attending to those roots in particular. The Latinismo distinction is an increasingly important one as it emphasizes the differing origins of the Latino experience – necessarily demanding recognition of their specific nationalities and justice for their unique stories.

Whether recent graduates from the Baltimore community, or established in the international art scene, the artists included in Chicanismo y Latinismo exemplify the expansion of the Chicano movement, and how that expansion demands further exploration and conversation surrounding the roots of its participants. As a community art center located in Baltimore’s most multi-cultural neighborhood, the Creative Alliance is proud to explore the expanded definition of “Chicano” today with our neighbors and surrounding neighborhoods, recognizing that the meeting ground for diverse communities happens where the encounter has been encouraged to grow.

“But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words

Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.”

-On the Pulse of Morning, Maya Angelou

Bruising Darkness is an installation comprised of rocks and ropes. Rocks provide a foundation on the floor, there to be looked at, to be stepped on. Ropes descend from above, draping and looming over. Viewers enter into the humid tension of the space between. Rather than reinscribe a straight line between poles, Bruising Darkness draws orbital paths amongst seemingly oppositional forces. The rift, the wound, the scar, the schism – here they shift from sites of shame to portals of potential.

-Claire Arctander and Latham Zearfoss

“Perhaps there is some other way to live…This possibility has to do with demanding a world in which bodily vulnerability is protected without therefore being eradicated and with insisting on the line that must be walked between the two.”

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Connect + Collect

Connect + Collect is a new initIative brought to you by BmoreArt's Cara Ober and Jeffrey Kent, an artist and curator based in Baltimore, designed to create awareness and momentum among new and experienced collectors, and to promote a culture of collecting in Baltimore.

Our first panel is with Art Collector, Consultant, and DC-based Lawyer Schwanda Rountree and Baltimore-based artist Mequitta Ahuja, a Guggenheim recipient whose work is in Rountree's collection. Topics to be discussed include how and why to start collecting art, how to conduct a studio visit, and best practices for building ethical, respectful, productive relationships between artists and patrons.

Mark Bradford: Tomorrow is Another Day at the BMA

Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day reflects the artist's longstanding belief in art’s ability to expose contradictory histories and inspire action in the present day.

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Help us continue to do what we do, but do it better and sustainably. Fractured Atlas is a 501(c)(3) public charity. Contributions for the purposes of Bmoreart are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

CALENDAR

The BmoreArt calendar features arts and events and is updated every day. Email us your events at [email protected] !